A Friday ground breaking kicked off “the best thing that could possibly happen” to Richlands, according to Mayor McKinley Smith.

The Onslow Water and Sewer Authority (ONWASA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture broke ground for a sewer treatment plant at the Northwest Regional Water Reclamation facility with local, state and federal officials present.

The $39 million project — funded in part by a $24 million loan from the USDA and a $9.8 million grant from the USDA — has been in progress for seven years.

The facility, located off Mills Field Road in Richlands, will provide sewer service to the Town of Richlands, eliminating the Richlands wastewater treatment plant which currently serves the area, as well as serve the northwest part of the ONWASA service area, according to information from the USDA.

The current plant has had multiple health violations caused by ionide coming through the plant and taking it over capacity, according to ONWASA officials.

“The residents actually need this. We’ve been waiting a long time for this,” Smith said.

The Richlands wastewater treatment plant has the capacity for 250,000 gallons. The Northwest Regional facility will have a 1 million gallon capacity.

A lot of people have worked on the project, officials said, and the absence of one of those people was felt Friday.

Richlands Mayor Marvin Trott, who served on the ONWASA board, died without seeing the plant come to fruition.

“I’m sorry he could not be here for that,” said Paul Conner, ONWASA board member and Town of Richlands Alderman.

Junior Freeman, a Swansboro commissioner and secretary/treasurer of the ONWASA board, said that the facility is “very progressive and environmentally sound.”

The facility will use a sequential batch reactor, which is a system that holds treatment functions in batches and processes as volume dictates. The process is different from what is normally used in the region, according to ONWASA officials.

The treatment is provided by bugs that eat the waste, which results in a “very efficient and natural operation that will take wastewater and from it produce water of a higher quality than the ground water under where we are now standing,” Freeman said.

He described the facility as an “investment in the future while protecting natural resources.”

Elmer Langston, the area director for the USDA, said that the department was “very pleased” to assist with the project.